US, South Korea begin largest-ever joint air drill

This handout photo taken on December 3, 2017 and provided by US Air Force on December 4, 2017 shows US Air Force F-35A Lightning II fighter jets taxiing at Kunsan Air Base in the southwestern port city of Gunsan. The US and South Korea on December 4, kicked off their largest ever joint air exercise, an operation North Korea has labelled an “all-out provocation”, days after Pyongyang fired its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile. / AFP PHOTO / US Air Force

The US and South Korea on Monday kicked off their largest ever joint air exercise, an operation North Korea has labelled an “all-out provocation”, days after Pyongyang fired its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile.

Risks of war
The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a “super-large” nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland.

Analysts agree that the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, but say it was likely achieved using a dummy warhead that would have been quite light.

They say a missile carrying a much heavier nuclear warhead would struggle to travel as far.

They are also sceptical that Pyongyang has mastered the sophisticated technology required to protect such a warhead from the extreme temperatures and stresses encountered as the missile hurtles back to Earth.

The latest launch, which saw the missile drop into Japan’s economic waters, was condemned by Tokyo’s parliament Monday, which slammed the North’s rogue weapons programme as an “imminent threat”.

“This is a frontal challenge against the international community that must not be tolerated,” added the resolution by Japan’s upper house, which came as the country’s hawish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said talking to the reclusive state was “meaningless”.

The North’s leader Kim Jong-Un has presided over significant progress in the country’s widely-condemned nuclear and missile programmes since taking power in 2011.

A nuclear standoff between Kim and Trump in recent months has seen the pair trade personal insults.

The tensions have fuelled concerns of another conflict, more than six decades after 1950-53 Korean War that left much of the peninsula in ruins.

But even some Trump advisers say US military options are limited when Pyongyang could launch an artillery barrage on the South Korean capital Seoul — only around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the heavily-fortified border and home to 10 million people.

Estimates on the potential casualties from another war vary widely.

The North has thousands of conventional artillery units along the border with the South that analysts say could kill tens of thousands.

In one of the latest estimates, Scott Sagan, senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said the toll could be as high as one million people from just the first day of a conflict.